Two garbage men hit it big in lottery

10 August 2007, MADRID (AP) - Two Spanish garbage men who emerged victorious in a recent strike demanding bonus pay for handling toxic muck have now won something bigger: EUR 440,000 in lottery booty.

10 August 2007

MADRID (AP) - Two Spanish garbage men who emerged victorious in a recent strike demanding bonus pay for handling toxic muck have now won something bigger: EUR 440,000 in lottery booty.

Joaquin Ligero, a 56-year-old driver, and Vito Marquez, a 42-year-old garbage collector, shared a ticket and won the second-prize Sunday in a sweepstakes known as the Euromillions, the newspaper El Mundo reported.

They had been sharing lottery tickets and soccer bets for more than a decade.

Their stroke of luck came a day after they and about 80 colleagues ended a five-day strike that left 700 tonnes of garbage rotting in the hot streets of Almunecar, a southern beach town of 24,000 that sees its population quintuple in summer.

Among other things, the strikers were demanding extra pay for handling what they called dangerous material. They won this concession from management.

When Ligero saw the number he shared with Marquez come up on a TV screen as a winner, he called his wife. "I turned pale, and I told her, 'Quick, put your glasses on to see if what I am seeing is for real'," he said.